Goose Question.—Judge Lawrence D. Bailey, in an account of the border troubles in Kansas written for the Garden City Sentinel in 1887, says: "All who were actively and heartily in favor of making Kansas a slave state were pronounced 'S. G. Q.,' that is to say 'sound on the goose question,' and all others were abolitionists."

McNamara, in his "Three Years on the Kansas Border" (p. 143, tells how some pro-slavery men from Platte county, Mo., came into Weston on March 29, 1855 (the day before the election for members of the first Kansas legislature), with a live goose fastened on the top of a long pole, thus giving a "living demonstration" that they were sound on the goose question and ready to invade the territory for the purpose of voting.

Just how the expression originated, and for what purpose—if there was any fixed purpose—is rather problematical. A diligent search through the archives of the Kansas Historical Society fails to bring to light any information on the subject. It may have been a sort of password of some of the secret political organizations of that day, or it may have originated with some one in a spirit of levity and accepted by the pro-slavery advocates as a slogan. Whatever may have been its origin, the newcomer to Kansas territory was certain to incur the lasting displeasure, if not the mortal enmity, of the pro-slaverites if they discovered that he was not "sound on the goose question."